


Ashes to Ashes

by WreakingHavok



Category: The Greatest Showman (2017)
Genre: AU, F/M, Fire, Gen, Not Proofread, One-Shot, People catching on fire, and not a happy one either, as is my style, enjoy, i don’t know where this came from, idk how to tag this are there really any warnings, more specifically - Freeform, oh also I’ve made Carlyle’s parents jerks, probably medically inaccurate, so please, sorry - Freeform, the fire, you know the one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 17:01:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13415682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WreakingHavok/pseuds/WreakingHavok
Summary: Philip Carlyle has always loved fire.*descriptions of fire and burning, also parents being passively abusive jerks*





	Ashes to Ashes

Philip Carlyle has never been scared of fire.

In fact, he’s always loved it. It’s warm, and bright. It has a lot of uses. 

People can entertain and amaze with it, as startlingly demonstrated to him by the circus’s firebreather. More importantly, it’s helped him get many a project done in the late hours of the night. 

Sometimes, he thinks fire has helped him more than people ever will.

(But then he looks at the circus and the life he’s built around him and knows that’s not true.)

Fire helped him not freeze to death when his parents locked him in his room for hours in the winter - curled up on the stone cold mattress with no blankets as a punishment.

It sits, contained in a matchbox that he always keeps in his pocket, just waiting to save him.

Sometimes he thinks he loves fire more than people. 

(All it takes, however, is one look at Anne, and that theory is proven incorrect.)

Fire won’t ever yell at him for smiling at that orphan boy on the street. Fire won’t threaten to kick him out because he chipped that cup his mother was so proud of. Fire won’t hold him and tell him it loves him while the guests coo, then send him up to his room without supper because he didn’t lie back.

(Anne wouldn’t either.)

Philip has always loved fire.

(And Philip has always loved Anne.)

So when he’s finished ushering out the last of the animals and staring dumbfounded in the crowd of soot-streaked people, he doesn’t want to accept what he’s seeing.

It’s beautiful - orange and red and yellow spiraling up into the sky from a mass of black streaked with color, cracks and sounds like gunshots ringing in his ears as Barnum’s Museum burns.

And it’s horrible.

Philip has never had anything feel like a part of him before the circus - and the building was the closest thing he’s ever felt to having a home.

He had friends there - he had a job there - he had a life there.

He used to have a family, too. He used to believe he had finally found a father figure. He used to believe he’d found someone who would finally be proud of him. 

(But P.T. Barnum hasn’t been seen in the circus for months, and he barely writes anymore, so that relationship burned long ago.)

There’s an ominous crack from the building engulfed in flames and Philip flinches.

He feels four years old again as the fire wagons pull up and everyone is shouting. It’s overwhelming - the noise and the chaos and people shoving past him. He wants to curl up in someone’s arms and cry and get away from his life burning down before him. 

(Anne would hold him, he thinks. Even though this is her life burning down too, she’d hold him because she is so much better and stronger than him.)

He turns to look at her, fighting back tears, blaming it on the smoke.

And it only takes one earth-shattering second to realize that Anne isn’t beside him. She isn’t anywhere.

He scans the crowd, and doesn’t see her. 

Philip opens his mouth and screams her name as loud as he can - there’s no response.

He tries to yell for her again, but he chokes on the smoke that pollutes the air around him.

And through his distorted panic comes another crashing boom and embers drift up into the sky, mocking him as they flicker out and fade.

The building won’t last much longer, that’s for certain.

And neither will Anne.

He has to find her. He has to do something. He can’t just stand here, useless, while fate or God or whatever the hell is up there systematically destroys everything he loves.

And he loves Anne - he does. He can tell because it feels like his heart is being ripped out of his chest and he’s panicking at the thought of losing her. He’s tearing up and he’s screaming her name, and she absolutely cannot still be in there.

But he doesn’t see her anywhere else and no one knows where she is.

So Philip, gathering one last deep breath, holds his shirt over his nose and runs for the burning building.

He hears someone scream his name and a hand tries to grab him, but he’s running on adrenaline and panic and he’s much too fast for them.

Philip knows it’s stupid to run into a burning building. But he has nothing left but Anne. If she’s gone too, then he doesn’t care about the risks.

With no second thoughts, he plunges into the inferno.

It’s hot - it’s so hot, he can feel his skin blistering as he dodges falling embers and flaming meteors of wood. 

He screams for Anne. No answer. He doesn’t even know if she could hear him.

The fire is everywhere, and so is the smoke. He coughs, the smoke even thicker inside than out.

There is surely nothing alive in this building anymore, but Philip can’t bring himself to turn and leave.

He knows he might die. He knows he probably will. He doesn’t care. 

He’s blinded by tears from the smoke that stings his eyes and even though he knows he was too late to save Anne, he can’t turn around. 

He’s signing his death warrant, but he’d rather die a fiery death than live in the cold without her. 

Flames lick at his face and arms, and he keeps stumbling into the building.

As he coughs repeatedly, gasping for oxygen, he feels something like betrayal rise up in him. 

It’s awfully cruel to take something he loves and use it to destroy his life. Fire has comforted him all his life and now it’s going to end it.

If he hadn’t been preoccupied hacking up his lungs, he would’ve laughed at the irony of it all.

A low rumbling accompanied by several sharp cracks sounds from above him, and he looks up in horror.

The dome atop Barnum’s Circus has finally given up, and is currently falling through the roof.

It’s hindered by the support beams, but they’re so fragile that they simply shatter under the burning hunk of wood slowly making its way down.

But make its way down it does, and it lands with a splintering crash and a burst of flame and embers, sending flames and shrapnel out in all directions.

Time freezes.

Philip’s bravery, courage and his delusional resolve to find and save Anne vanishes. It leaves him feeling exhausted - sad. Betrayed. 

Burned out.

She can’t be alive anymore - not after that. The roof is collapsing - and he himself is dying from simply being here two minutes.

And he knows that she would’ve died long before he crossed the threshold. A mix between a cough and a sob tears its way out of his dry throat.

He apologizes softly to the dark-skinned girl he loves and and closes his eyes.

He’s sorry for rejecting her at the opera. He’s sorry for letting his parents scare him away from her - away from another thing he loves. He’s sorry he was too late and he’s sorry she had to love him.

He’s not sorry he loved her, though. She’s the first one he ever truly loved.

Burning wooden splinters from the fallen sign slice and embed themselves in his skin. He feels his sleeve catch fire, heat searing his flesh, and knows that the rest of him will soon follow.

It hurts now - more than it did before. The heat is overwhelming and painful, and he can’t breathe without coughing up ashes. 

He has mere seconds before he becomes a human torch, and he can feel the pain spreading with the flames. It hurts. He screams.

Philip registers that he’s fallen to his knees. His face burns and his vision is a blur of reds and oranges and shockingly, some blue.

It really is beautiful. And horrible.

Philip has always loved fire.

Fire is reliable. If you light it and care for it, fire can burn forever.

He thinks that he might burn forever, too. Ashes to ashes, as they all say.

His vision spots and goes black. 

The fire burns, but it’s warm. Like a hug, almost. 

Philip doesn’t realize that he’s being dragged out of the fire. He doesn’t realize that he is being hugged - desperately held against Phineas Barnum’s chest. He doesn’t realize that Anne shrieks when she sees him, that she cries when she realizes why he went inside.

Philip Carlyle is dead before these things could ever happen.

**Author's Note:**

> . . . I should really stop trying to write romance.
> 
> Let me know what you thought!


End file.
